


fixed settlements and the olive tree

by iphigenias



Category: Love Victor (TV 2020)
Genre: Coming Out and What Happens After, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24995479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iphigenias/pseuds/iphigenias
Summary: He’s reminded, bizarrely, of abseiling at freshman camp last year; the pounding of his heart, beating almost in his throat, and the dizzying feeling of losing his grip on the handhold only to fall back and be caught by the harness cinched firmly around his waist and thighs.Holding Benji’s hand feels a little like that.*Or, the day after Victor comes out.
Relationships: Benjamin "Benji" Campbell/Victor Salazar
Comments: 30
Kudos: 252





	fixed settlements and the olive tree

**Author's Note:**

> this is a bit of a mess but i've been wanting to write something for this show since i binged the whole season in a single day and i finally came up with this! it doesn't tie up all the loose ends but i've done my best to offer some semblance of closure (and possibility). unbeta'd but i'll probably come back later to fix up any mistakes x
> 
> title is from emily wilson's commentary on her translation of the odyssey: "Whereas Poseidon favors the untamed world of the stormy sea, Athena loves fixed settlements and the olive tree—a crop whose oil was used in archaic Greece for cooking and skin care. Poseidon makes the earth shake; Athena makes even the most rugged, barren landscape available for cultivation."

♡

Victor calls Benji at two in the morning.

“Hello?” His voice is scratchy, quiet; Victor thinks about how he must look, rumpled and sleep-soft in bed, hair sticking up on one side like it did that morning in the hotel he tries not to think about.

“Hey,” Victor answers. There’s a sliver of moonlight peeking through the gap in his curtains; it casts a long, silvery stripe down the centre of the carpet and looks almost cold to the touch. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

“No,” Benji replies. “I couldn’t fall asleep. I’m, um…” he trails off, quieter than before, and Victor smiles at the sound, tucking his phone closer.

“You’re what?”

Benji laughs softly down the line. “I’m drawing you, actually.”

“Oh.” Victor curls his toes beneath the quilt. “You’ve already drawn me.”

“There’s nowhere that says I can’t do it again,” Benji says, and it sounds like he’s smiling. “Besides, this one’s for me to keep.”

“Oh, is it now?”

“Yeah,” Benji answers. “It is.” If this were one of those nineties movies Pilar likes, Victor would be twirling the phone cord around his finger right now. He thinks maybe Benji would be doing the same.

The hallway light turns on outside Victor’s bedroom door; he listens to the careful footsteps down the carpet, the quiet drag of slippers against the fibres. Mom, then. The bathroom door opens and closes with its usual sigh.

“I couldn’t sleep either,” Victor admits. “And technically it’s tomorrow, and…”

“And?” Benji nudges, gentle.

Victor exhales. The toilet flushes down the hall and the faucet turns on. “And I wanted to hear your voice.” The water shuts off; bathroom door opening and closing again, hallway light flicking off as his mom walks past his room. Maybe he’s imagining it, but it seems as though she hesitates before passing—except no knock comes, and her bedroom door closes right after.

Benji sighs. “It didn’t go well, then?”

“You mean Mia, or my family?” Victor asks. He would laugh if it didn’t hurt so much. “Because neither, actually.”

“Pilar?”

“I… don’t know,” Victor admits. “She found out that I—cheated. On Mia. And when I told them she and my parents just _stared_ at me and didn’t say anything so I just—I just left. Went to my room.”

“And you’ve been in there ever since?” Benji guesses.

“That about sums it up. Oh, and Mia found out somehow, and hates me, so there’s that too.”

“Victor, I…”

“No, it’s okay.” Victor rolls over in bed so he can see out through the gap in his curtains. The moon is heavy in the sky and Victor feels its weight in his bones. “I don’t want to talk about it right now. Could you just—talk? To me?”

“Of course,” Benji replies. There’s a shuffling sort of sound on his end of the line, like he’s shifting around in bed, getting comfortable. Victor closes his eyes to picture it; wishes he was there to see it, wishes they were back in that hotel room, wishes he could do it all over again only better, without hurting anyone. “What about?”

“Anything,” Victor replies. “Everything.”

There’s that laugh again—Victor imagines the way it makes Benji’s eyes crinkle and presses a smile into his pillow. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Benji says. “So I’ve been stuck on this lyric for forever, and could use a second opinion…”

♡

In the morning, Victor listens at his bedroom door. He can’t hear anything beyond the gentle murmur of the radio in the kitchen; takes his chances and makes a dash for the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He runs the shower almost too hot to take, wants to feel the scald of it on his shoulder blades; presses his forehead into the wet tiling, closes his eyes so shampoo doesn’t get in them and just rests there for a long moment, willing his pulse to slow.

He dresses in the bathroom, dumps his sleep shirt in the hamper. Listens again at the door; just the radio.

He’s almost out of the house free when Pilar walks in from the kitchen to the living room, coffee in hand. She looks at him, his hand on the doorknob, and her face does this strange sort of crumple that takes him a moment to register as guilt.

“Victor, I—”

“It’s okay,” he says, because he so badly wants it to be. She tilts her head; studies him. Sighs and holds out the coffee in her hand.

“You probably need this more than I do,” she says, and it’s an apology without the embarrassment of an actual one. Victor takes the cup gingerly, swallows back the coffee even though it’s burning, and places the empty mug on the sill. He hesitates.

“I’m… sorry if this makes things weird,” he says, looking at his shoes. They’re the same ones Benji complimented him on, what feels like a lifetime ago.

“Are you kidding?” Pilar sounds angry and it makes him look back up, startled. “It’s not weird!” She takes a breath, presses her hand to her forehead. “Okay, maybe a little. But I just need to get used to it. That’s all. It’s _not_ weird, Victor, I promise.” She tips her head at the door. “Now go and see your boyfriend already.” 

“Oh, so you’re teasing me now?” Victor grins, and Pilar rolls her eyes.

“I’m always gonna tease you,” she replies, and there’s another quiet apology in those words, too. She nods at the door again. “ _Go_.”

Victor laughs but does as he’s told, pulling the door closed behind him and, well. If that isn’t a metaphor for his life right now, he doesn’t know what is.

♡

Benji is waiting for him at Brasstown. Victor shoves his hands into his jacket pockets as he approaches because he doesn’t know what else to do with them. He comes to a stop a couple feet away, rocks back and forth on his heels and bites his lip, just a little, when Benji meets his eyes and smiles at him the way he always does: soft and a little amused, maybe, like he has a secret tucked into the corner of his mouth and is just waiting for Victor to learn it.

“Hey,” Victor says, shrugging his shoulders. “Um. I don’t really know…”

“If you can kiss me?” Benji finishes for him, tilting his head. “The answer’s yes, for the record. But only if yours is a yes too.”

“Um. Okay.” Victor darts a look around the street; it’s pretty deserted for a Sunday morning, actually, just a couple people window-shopping on the other side of the road and a jogger approaching from downtown. Carefully, like blowing glass, Victor bridges the gap between them; leans forward into Benji’s space and brushes a kiss against his cheek, hands still firmly in his pockets. He leans back and presses his lips together. Benji laughs and steps into Victor’s space, this time; reaches a hand into one of his pockets and takes hold of Victor’s there, slotting their fingers together easy as anything.

“How about a walk?” he asks, like he’s not literally _holding Victor’s hand_ right now. Victor swallows down the lump in his throat and draws out their joined hands from his pocket; lets them hang together between them. He’s reminded, bizarrely, of abseiling at freshman camp last year; the pounding of his heart, beating almost in his throat, and the dizzying feeling of losing his grip on the handhold only to fall back and be caught by the harness cinched firmly around his waist and thighs.

Holding Benji’s hand feels a little like that.

“A walk sounds nice,” he says after a long moment, and Benji smiles, nudges their shoulders together.

“One step at a time, Victor,” he says softly, turning his back on Brasstown’s dark windows towards the flood of sunlight before them. “That’s all it is. One step, then the next.”

Victor takes it.

♡

He messages Mia in the afternoon while Benji’s getting them ice-cream from the vendor in the park.

 _Hey_ , he types. Deletes it. _Hi_. Deletes that. Takes a deep breath and looks over at Benji in line at the ice-cream van. He’s scrolling through his own phone, biting his lip; senses Victor looking at him, maybe, because he glances up, grins, waves. Victor waves back.

He picks up his phone again.

_Hi Mia. This is Victor. I’m not sure if you’ve deleted my number or not. I don’t blame you if you have. I know it isn’t worth much but I wanted to say that I’m sorry. We met at a time in my life I was confused about who I am and you were so smart and funny and beautiful I thought I could get past it, but I couldn’t. I wanted to tell you the other night but then your dad and Veronica had their news and I didn’t want to upset you more. I was going to tell you today, I swear. I just wanted you to have the perfect spring formal because you deserve it. You deserve everything, Mia. You definitely deserve more than me. So I’m sorry and I understand if you can’t forgive me, but I’ll always want to be your friend. Victor._

He presses send and turns off his phone. Benji sits back down a couple minutes later, handing him an ice-cream already dripping down the cone. “Everything okay?” he asks when Victor doesn’t say anything. Victor looks at him, then, in the warm spring sunlight, the way it turns his hair burnished gold. He has chocolate ice-cream on the tip of his nose and broad shoulders and big hands and the skin on his cheek when Victor reaches out to touch it is rough with barely-there stubble.

“Everything’s perfect,” Victor says, just to see the way it makes Benji smile—but the words aren’t the lie he thought they’d be. Maybe they’re not the whole truth, either—but Victor’s getting better at telling the difference.

♡

Mom is waiting on the couch when he gets home a little after eight. Victor pauses in the act of hanging his keys up; swallows, drops her gaze as he slips them over the hook. “Do you want to sit down?” she asks, and she sounds nervous, more nervous than she’d been last night, even. Victor hesitates but takes the offered cushion, sitting with his hands beneath his thighs.

“Oh, mi amor,” she says suddenly, and pulls Victor into a hug.

He’s motionless for a moment, still expecting the worst, but after a moment brings his hands up to his mom’s shoulders and hugs her back. When he pulls away the fabric of her shirt is wet with tears—he hadn’t even realised he was crying.

She wipes his cheeks with a shaking hand. “Have you been wanting to tell us for a while?” she asks quietly, and Victor nods. She brushes back his hair. “I’m so sorry if you felt like you couldn’t.”

“ _I’m_ sorry,” Victor blurts out. “You said—you told me you never had to worry about me. I didn’t want that to change.”

“ _Victor_.” His name sounds like it’s been ripped from her throat; when he looks at her it’s as though she’s been punched in the stomach. “I always worry about you. You’re my baby. You’ll _always_ be my baby.” She pulls him back in, cards her fingers through his hair. “And you have nothing to apologise for. That’s what I should have said last night and I’m sorry I didn’t.”

“It’s okay,” Victor begins, but she shushes him.

“It’s not,” she replies firmly. “But it will be from now on, okay?”

“Dad?” They pull apart for good this time. His mom rests her hand on his knee.

“He just needs some time,” she replies. “But he loves you, you know that.”

Victor nods, wipes his eyes. “And you—you’ll be okay? Not with me, with the…”

“Separation,” she finishes for him, and it isn’t a question. She smiles. “Look at you. Everything going on in your life and you’re still worried about your dear old mom.”

“You’re not old!”

“That’s not what you should take away from that,” she says. Smiles again; hooks a hand under Victor’s chin so he meets her gaze. “I love that you worry about me, baby. But I’d love it if you worried about yourself more. Can you do that?” Victor nods; remembers Simon’s advice about the same thing. “Good,” his mom says. “Now. Pilar said something about a boyfriend?”

“ _Mom_.” Victor laughs, squirming out of her reach on the couch, and just like that it’s like nothing’s changed, except everything has—and maybe, just maybe, it’s changed for the better.

♡

Eleven pm finds Victor in bed on his phone. He won’t be up much longer; feels tired to his bones, a sore reminder of his poor sleep last night. But he has one more thing to do.

_Dear Simon,_

_I’ve officially been out for a day. Why didn’t you tell me how good it felt to say out loud? I would’ve done it much sooner (kidding). It didn’t go great last night, but today was better. I still don’t know where I stand with Mia or my dad, but at least now I know I have people in my corner. Other than you, of course._

_Thank you for being there for me these past few months. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you. For now, though, I think I’m going to try and get by on my own. Make my own path, I guess, one step at a time._

_Say hi to everyone for me, and thanks again for the jacket._

_Love, Victor_

♡

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on twitter @[svnsvstvrk](https://twitter.com/svnsvstvrk)


End file.
